Last week I posted a video of a rather strange car chase, from a very B-grade movie from the mid-1970’s. Thinking about weird car chases, I suddenly thought about Bollywood. I’ve posted several Indian cinematic fight scenes here that were so over-the-top, they were actually funny. I wondered . . . has Bollywood done the same thing to cinematic car chases?
Oh, yes. Yes, they have.
Here’s the first instalment in a week of Bollywood car chases.
Just where the hell did all those explosions come from??? And how did the action morph from city streets, to the waterfront, to a shopping mall, to the streets again? And how many cops and police vehicles can pursue one man? It looked like half the Indian Army to me!
EDITED TO ADD: I replaced the original clip, which turns out to be abbreviated, with a slightly longer one that shows the end. It’s still ridiculously over the top, but you get a better idea of why the protagonist was so eager to escape.
Peter
TOTALLY unbelievable! Totally FUN.
Okay… all I could think while watching that was, "WHAT THE HECK AM I EVEN WATCHING?!?! And what's with the random (what I assume is a) wedding scene right smack in the middle?"
Oh, yes – here comes the cavalry . . .
And yeah, when dragged up against a lamppost, instead of having my arms ripped off I'm gonna send two fully-grown horses running at top speed tumbling. Right.
Still, I just might go through all that for *that* girl . . .
In the horse scene mentioned by Mr. Gibson, the horses are tripped by a contraption called a "running W," which stops the horses' front legs in a full run. This causes the horses to somersault forward, which is spectacular but kills many horses by breaking their necks or backs (notice how the horses stretch their necks out when they start to fall in that scene). For this reason, the running W has been outlawed in the U.S. for many years. It still is, or was, quite popular in Bollywood; I've seen several Bollywood clips like this one that use running W horse "stunts," but I don't know how old the clips are or if they're still being used in Bollywood.
In American movies, the horses always fall sideways. It may not be as authentic, but the horses can get up after the camera quits rolling.
Instead of the obligatory "No animals were harmed in making this film" disclaimer they should have one to the effect that over 200 stunt-men were hospitalized.